Wednesday, September 27, 2017

The Words Aren't Mine This Time, but I Agree with the Author 100%!

Fellow author Karen Moline shared this on her Facebook page. I shared it as well, and I'm sharing it here for those of you who don't do Facebook.

This long rant was posted by attorney Seth Abramson on Twitter, and it
is one of the best dissections of Trump I've read. Please share:

"We need to never again discuss this man with respect to policy — it's
become more than clear in 9 months that he holds no policy positions. So
if you support Donald Trump because of any view you claim he holds, I
don't ever want to hear from you again. The man holds no views. There is
no position Donald Trump has ever taken that he has not, at some point
in the past or present, taken the opposite position to. We mustn't
ever discuss this man as someone "challenging the system" or any similar
bromide. His White House is the most corrupt ever. Not one story of
honorable conduct has emerged from this White House. Instead, it's been
lies, deception, corruption, graft, propaganda. But the most important
thing is this: this is the first U.S. president to systematically and
willfully terrorize his own populace daily. His changeability is
intended to keep us anxious and on guard. In fact, he's admitted
publicly, many times, that this is a tactic of his. His corruption
is equally studied: his business model has always been "get away with
what you can," and that's exactly how he's governed. He saw that he had a
GOP Congress — and knew that his worst-case scenario was not getting
re-elected to a job that he never really wanted. That's why he hasn't
eliminated his conflicts of interest, delivered on his promises,
"drained the swamp," acted as any kind of leader. His presidency is a
criminal enterprise designed to enrich his family and give him the
attention his father clearly denied him as a kid. He has no beliefs,
no ambitions, no morals, no principles, no guidelines, no plans, no
expectations. He simply needs to sow chaos daily. What Trump knows
better than most is that America is a chaos machine—you feed it and it
spits out attention, headlines, sometimes money. I want to be very clear
here: Donald Trump is a toxic human with a toxic public presence
and—worst of all—he wants to poison his people. His reign will go down
not just in U.S. history but human history as a reign of uncommon
cruelty in the democracies of this millennium. It's more than that
he'll go down in our history as the worst president we'll ever
have—he'll go down as one of our greatest villains. Benedict Arnold
tried to betray America for a prior sovereign—Trump is trying to
*torture* a nation that was good to him his whole life. Have you
noticed a change in your mood since January? I mean a change you can't
seem to escape? Anxiety, anger, fear, confusion, doubt? The most
ubiquitous man in your nation is trying to poison you daily—because it
gives him power—and no one's stopping him from doing it. If you've seen a
dramatic change lately in your personality, home life, belief in the
nation you love—please know that you're not alone. I'm not using
hyperbole: you're under attack. A deliberate, unprovoked, systematic,
and—yes—evil attack. And it's working. We're losing. When humans are
endangered, confused and hopeless, there are certain things we turn
to—all of which Trump is deliberately stealing away. Our fight or flight
instinct—which Trump activates—can be quelled if we're given respite,
which is why Trump ensures we have no respite. That's why his
tweets—which are intended to terrorize, and *do*—come in a daily barrage
of needless conflict, warmongering, and cruelty. He must never stop
tweeting, because his tweets now activate our culture in a way so
*inescapable* that we're almost like his prisoners. You think he's
attacking North Korea in his tweets? No—he's trying to terrorize *you*.
The NFL? You. Segments of America? No—all of us. When humans are
confused, we seek the stability of truth, trusted institutions,
neighbors. He's destroying those anchors systematically. "Fake news"
isn't about getting re-elected—it's about controlling your
fight-or-flight instinct by giving you no safe harbor in "truth." Every
institution we like or trust, he's undermined. The media. Government.
Unions. Hell—even the NFL. Veterans (when he feels like it). He's
enabled by the GOP—but he's no Republican. He wants to destroy any
politics or politician whose world he's not at the center of. He's a
malignant narcissist, and his *only* ambition is to spread his toxicity
nationwide in whichever ways feed his perverse pathology. If you're a
Trump voter, by all means laugh it up. You'll be caught in wars,
recessions, and international collapse like the rest of us. He has 35%
support because Americans love to be right/see fools suffer—and Trump
voters think they're on the right side of the equation. Time will
show that we were all the fools—and whatever temporary satisfaction the
Right got from annoying the Left wasn't worth America. Because the last
thing—of the three I mentioned—humans look for in a crisis is hope, and
he's systematically taking *that* away as well. We don't have hope
future elections will be fair. We don't have hope our government is
working in our interests. We don't have hope we can trust and love our
neighbors and they'll trust and love us back. And we don't have hope
things will start to make sense again. Trump has declared war on
America—crafting his own brand of "American carnage"—and some groups
have felt the pain quicker than others. But only a fool fails to see
that the pain and suffering that comes from having a madman as a leader
is soon coming for every one of us. Things are going to get very
bad. And many fools will say, "Well—that's America." And America *is*
deeply flawed. But we weren't *this*. One in every few generations in
the West, a leader arises *so vile* that he can draw out the evil from
his population and weaponize it. Trump is *not* Hitler. There was only
*one* Hitler. But Trump is the *sort* of Hitler that America in 2017—at
its very worst—can breed. Everything evil a man can do to a country like
this, at a time like this, in a span of four or eight years, Donald
Trump will try to do. He'll try to make the vulnerable live in fear.
He'll position himself as unreviewable by the media and government.
He'll sow confusion. And when his crimes are uncovered—and he's been
a villain and criminal his whole adult life—he'll try to stoke violence
to save himself. Trump is the most dangerous American of all our
lifetimes—he's so dangerous we can't fully apprehend the danger or how
to respond to it. He's everything people say—a pathological liar; a
corrupt politician; a serial sexual assailant; and, yes, a traitor—but
he's also more. He's an actually evil presence that hangs over your
life—and the life of a nation you love—every single day. And he may be
unstoppable. Is there any reason to trust future election results—now
that we know Russia is hacking/interfering and Trump's doing *zero* to
stop it? And is there any reason to think the damage Trump has done
to our political system can be solved in just a single American
generation? And as he plunges us deeper into our Longest War and tries
to start World War III in Asia, can we be certain lasting doom isn't
ahead? My point: there is only one fight in America today that matters,
because all other fights are ultimately a direct corollary to this one.
If we want to save ourselves—and our country—Trump must be legally,
peacefully and transparently removed from a position of power. ASAP.
P.S It's OK to finally indulge the idea that everything is as bad as
you think it is if hitting rock-bottom gives you the courage to FIGHT."

Over the years, I've had some strong feelings about presidents I didn't vote for and/or didn't agree with, yet I have never really understood some people's rage, outrage, angst, and an assortment of reactions that have left me shocked speechless.

This rant helps me understand, if only somewhat. Thank you for posting it, Norma.

The not quite "Hitler" portion able has been in the back of my mind, and sure. Not quite Hitler, but isn't he bad enough? When you compare Hitler with how Trump has somehow hypnotized certain people into believing in him, no matter what he does, isn't this essentially the same? I was wondering when someone some where would bring that into the forefront, and good. Someone has, but it's a scary thought that we may have a civil war on our hands if something isn't done and soon!

Our hopes are with Mueller, but as long as this president gets chances to name Supreme Court justices, we will be generations recovering from the wounds he leaves. And then there will be scars.

There have been Presidents I didn't like and didn't vote for, but never did I think any of them would deliberately betray this country's principles or deliberately start a nuclear war or deliberately reduce our proud land to a banana republic. What worries me most is that he's tearing this country apart while Putin is laughing at how easy infiltration has been.